Episode 43 – Dueling Penises – Myths Your Teacher Hated

Episode 43 Show Notes

Source: Egyptian Mythology

This week on MYTH, it’s time to kill a god. Well, sort of. You’ll learn that some gods have massive wood, that Osiris probably has claustrophobia, and that zombie sex is the best. Then, in Gods and Monsters, we’ll meet the angry monkey who uses his penis in creative ways. This is the Myths Your Teacher Hated podcast, where I tell the stories of cultures from around the world in all of their original, bloody, uncensored glory. Modern tellings of these stories have become dry and dusty, but I’ll be trying to breathe new life into them. This is Episode 43, “Dueling Penises”. As always, this episode is not safe for work.
It’s been a while since we’ve visited the sun-drenched deserts of ancient Egypt, but it’s not far from mythical Agrabah, so it seemed like a logical place to journey next. This week, we’re going to be getting to the very heart of Egyptian mythology (literally, in this case) with one of the cornerstones of the ancient theology. It’s a story from at least the 24th Century BC, so this is a very, very old story.
In the early, early days of the Egyptian empire, the kingdom was ruled over the green-skinned god-king Osiris, who was descended from the sun god Ra and the creator god Atum (we’ll get into the creation myth in another episode, cause it’s a doozy). Osiris is actually the Greek version of his name – his Egyptian name was Asir, but we’ll be using the Greek version since that’s what most people are familiar with. He was the first son of the earth god Geb and the sky goddess Nut, and the elder brother of the chaos god Set, magic goddess Isis, the protection goddess Nephthys, and Horus the elder (who is usually distinct from the Horus we’ll meet in a little while, although they may be alternate forms of the same being). Being gods and royalty at the same time, they kept all of their sex-making in the family, with Osiris and Isis and Nepthys and Set each being a married couple. Incest is pretty par for the course in ancient gods and ancient kings.
Little is known about the reign of Osiris, and much of what is known is contradictory. Osiris was a god of order, and a natural counter to his brother Set (not unlike Loki and Odin from the Norse pantheon). He had taken over from Geb when the elder god abdicated the throne for unimportant reasons. The people of Egypt at that time were cruel and uncivilized, considered to be barbarous cannibals in some versions. Osiris was less than pleased that his people were being utter shit-heads, so he went out among them (being human himself as well as a god), and he taught them the art of agriculture, gave them the earliest laws, and taught them civilization and religion. Osiris was aided in this by the god of writing and wisdom Thoth, who was either summoned into existence by his own divine will or sprouted from the forehead of Set in a truly bizarre instance that we’ll get into a little later (as the exact chronology of when Thoth comes into existence is a little unclear and contradictory).
Osiris was considered to be one of the greatest kings Egypt would ever see, ruling his people with kindness, fairness, and compassion. Having settled his people and brought them up to an acceptable level of human decency, Osiris decided that he needed to go out into the wider world to bring his gifts to the savages beyond his borders. Leaving Isis as his Queen-regent to rule in his absence, he sets out, either alone or with Thoth as his only companion.
If you’ve learned anything from me about chaos gods, you already know that Set was just seething with an unreasonable hatred for his goody two-shoes dickhead of a brother. He was insanely jealous of his elder brother for having the rightful claim to the throne, and he lusted after Osiris’ power. According to The Pyramid Texts, the oldest known stories from the Old Kingdom, Osiris had kicked Set for some reason or other, and his brother nursed his grievance into a murderous rage. In a later version of the story, Osiris seduces Set’s wife, Nephthys, and Set is enraged at being a cuckold. A different version says that Nephthys was actually the seducer, disguising herself by taking the form of Isis and getting her hands all over that sweet, sweet god-king peen and giving birth to Anubis (which was especially unfortunate as Nephthys had been barren prior riding Osiris’ disco stick). She might have also wanted to sleep with someone who wasn’t fantastically ugly, as Set was supposed to be (because, as you know ugly people are always evil). In still other versions, Set is pissed off because Osiris leaves his wife in charge during his absence rather than his brother, as Set felt was his right. In yet other versions, it was because Set lusted after Isis himself. Regardless of the reason, or maybe reasons since it’s entirely possible that more than one thing caused his hatred, Set decides to murder his brother when he comes back from his journey abroad.
Thus, it came to be that on the 17th day of the month of Hathor in the 28th year of Osiris’ reign as pharaoh (which would be sometime in late September or early November), Set put his plan into motion. This part of the story is even murkier than the rest due to a belief common in ancient Egypt that written words had the power to affect reality. Given that, they were extremely hesitant to write down a story as profoundly awful as the murder of a benevolent god-king by the living embodiment of chaos, and typically alluded to a story they mostly assumed you already knew. Some versions of the story straight up deny that he was ever murdered at all, but most of the existing accounts pretty clearly require Osiris to be deadsies, although some versions say it was Haroeris, an older form of Horus (who might also be Horus the elder) who is then avenged by younger Horus, who is Haoeris’ son by Isis. Still, in most versions it’s Osiris and it’s pretty certain that Set killed him.
In the most straightforward and boring version, Set transforms himself into an animal, usually a crocodile or bull, to kill him directly. In the version from Plutarch, Set ordered a beautiful chest of ebony and cedarwood custom-made to his specifications then threw a banquet in his brother’s honor. Once everyone had started to get a little bit drunk, he offered up a challenge to the party-goers: whomever could fit inside the exquisitely crafted chest could have it. Everyone at the party tried it, one by one, but nobody fit it just right until finally, Osiris climbed inside. It fit him snug, like it was made just for him (which it in fact had been). As soon as Osiris lay down, Set slammed the lid shut and nailed it closed, Then, for good measure, he sealed it with molten lead and threw it, his brother still trapped inside, into the Nile.
This is a myth, and Osiris is a god, so you’re probably expecting some god-magic to get him out of this jam. That’s…not what happened. The chest floated down the river, carrying the increasingly panicked Osiris inside, who didn’t have any room to move and so had no chance to break free. It’s unclear why no one else at the party stopped Set, although a number of versions say that he had 72 co-conspirators, which would go a long way towards explaining it. The chest floated out to sea and drifted to shore near Byblos in Phoenicia, where there suddenly grew a tamarisk tree, a plant which often grows low on the water’s edge. There, the drowned body of the god-king lay forgotten and the tree grew around it.
Some years later, a local Phoenician king had the tree turned into a column in his palace, completely unaware of the nasty surprise inside. During all of the time that Osiris lay dead and lost in the tree (and later, the column), Isis never gave up hope that she would find her beloved brother-husband. One day, she was out looking for her lost love and happened upon the king of Byblos’ palace. Through some magical affinity that the goddess possessed (some versions say that she had the help of Nephthys, Anubis, and Thoth to magically locate the corpse), she knew that her husband’s body was in the city, so she went to the palace disguised as an old woman to scout things out.
She quickly realized that the king was utterly ignorant of what he had in his palace, and so she decided to get it back in a way that didn’t involve raining destruction down on his head for an innocent mistake (as some other pantheons might have done). One of the king’s sons had been bitten by a venomous snake and was almost certainly going to die. Isis chanted over the wound and healed the child (which was actually a pretty easy minor miracle for the goddess), winning the king’s great gratitude. In thanks, he offered her whatever she wanted in payment and the old woman asked for the pillar of the palace. The king was more than a little confused by this utterly bizarre request, but he was also an honest man and he had it removed and given to the woman. She took it back to Egypt in some unspecified but probably magic manner and cut it open to find her husband’s body which, due to his divine nature, hadn’t rotted at all.
Now it gets weirder and ickier. Isis transformed herself into a kite (the bird, not the toy) and spoke magic words with her bird mouth while furiously beating her wings over the corpse of Osiris. It took enormous effort and skill, but she was able to revive the dead god-king, but only for a short while. Since they didn’t have long, they hurried to have necrophiliac bestiality sex between a bird woman and an animated corpse man, somehow resulting in Isis getting pregnant with the god Horus. They had not had an heir at this time (which is a little weird since he’s been reigning for over two decades, but whatever), so the throne had passed to Set, which was unacceptable. He came in his wife, impregnating the woman who was, as so many gods seem to be, insanely fertile, and died again. Isis hid her husband’s body in the reeds along the river, fully intending to try and bring him back again for another round of hot undead fucking or, if she couldn’t manage that again, to bury him with dignity.
Set couldn’t help but notice that his sister, who was a widow, was suddenly pregnant. He knew her well enough to be certain that she hadn’t just found a boy toy to diddle, so the only explanation was that she had somehow found Osiris. Since he hadn’t come back to avenge himself on Set and take the throne from him, he couldn’t be alive, so Set began to search for his brother’s hidden corpse, and also for Isis, who had hidden herself away in a thicket of papyrus from Set’s coming wrath when he figured shit out.
One day, while out hunting, his divine senses twigged to the presence of his dead brother somewhere nearby. He snarled in rage. “I knew it. I fucking knew it! That bitch somehow managed to get herself knocked up with this dead bastard’s whelp!” He knew he’d need to do something about the challenge to his power coming in the form of his new nephew. First, though, he needed to make sure that Osiris couldn’t get any beyond-the-grave nookie again and raise another challenger once he’d dealt with this one. Full of hate and rage, Set desecrated his brother’s corpse, cutting it into many pieces. Some stories say it was 14 (half the days in a lunar month); some say it was 16 (the ideal rise in the water level of the river in cubits); and some say it was 42 (the number of nomes, or territories, in ancient Egypt). Then, he scattered the numerous pieces across the vast expanse of the country.
Isis came back to visit with her husband regularly, even if she didn’t have the power to bring him back from the dead again just yet, and so it didn’t take her long to discover that his body was missing. Again, she searched for his body only to find that, this time, it wasn’t in one place but in many. In what would probably be a really annoying fetch quest in a video game about these events, she hunted down all but one piece of the body. Guess which piece she couldn’t find. Got your guess? Did you guess his penis? If so, get yourself a prize (not from me – just, you know, in general). The divine dick had been eaten by an oxyrhyncus, a fish sacred to Set in the world’s worst blowjob and was gone forever, ensuring that no more zombie procreation could happen. The fish was thereafter cursed, and the Egyptians were forbidden from eating of it’s tainted flesh, according to Plutarch.
Depressed, Isis painstakingly put the pieces back together and magically patched them up as best she could. There was definitely no bringing him back ever again, so she could only give him a proper burial. Anubis and Nephthys helped her to wrap his body in the shroud that would become famous as the first-ever mummy, which is how Anubis became the god of embalmers and how Osiris became depicted as a mummy in most images we have of him.
The other gods (or maybe just Ra) took notice of Isis’ tears as she said farewell to her husband. Unlike Isis, he did have the power to bring back Osiris from the dead, but since he didn’t have his penis, he was incomplete and therefore unable to rule the land of the living (although frankly, maybe just having a penis shouldn’t be the only qualification for holding power – just sayin’). Still, he was a good and just king, so Ra decided to set Osiris up as the Lord of the Dead as well as the judge of dead souls.
As I’ve already mentioned, there are a couple of gods all named Horus, who are confusingly similar to one another. If you’re lost as to who’s who, don’t feel bad – Plutarch didn’t fare any better. He was so confused about the multiple Hori that he made up a story about Isis getting pregnant by Osiris while still in Nut’s womb and giving birth to Horus as an infant, making him therefore both brother and son to the sibling gods. The Pyramid Texts, however, are clear that they are separate entities, with Horus the Elder warning the other gods not to get involved with Horus the Younger and his evil things which, frustratingly, are never elaborated on.
It’s a little unclear how much time passes next, as gods don’t necessarily conform to human growth schedules, but at some point the grown Horus challenges his uncle for the throne. Set, naturally, is unwilling to give it up. Horus claims he is the rightful heir by virtue of being the firstborn son of the previous king, while Set claims that Osiris was already dead before he was conceived, so it totally doesn’t count since Set was already the rightful king by then (even if he did get there by murdering his brother and king) and besides, he’s older, stronger, and more experienced than this little pissant upstart godling. This leads, as one might expect, to civil war.
The best version of the contest between the two gods that we have is from the Chester Beatty Papyrus, dating from the 20th dynasty reign of Ramses V, and is known as the Contendings of Horus and Set, which lasted 80 years in total. The story there takes place during a truce in the fighting where the two claimants to the throne bring their case to the Ennead, a group of nine powerful deities worshipped at Heliopolis, a major Egyptian city. The group included the sun god Ra/Atum; his children Shu and Tefnut; their children Geb and Nut; and their children Osiris, Isis, Set, and Nephthys (although, in this case, Set is obviously not part of the tribunal). Sometimes, the group would include Horus, although again, obviously not in this case. This grouping was not necessarily respected as the supreme deities throughout Egypt in cities beyond Heliopolis.
Regardless, the Ennead debate the merits of the case and are mostly leaning towards Horus, but Ra (who heads the council) has not been consulted. The rationale appears to be that since Thoth has the power to bestow the Uninjured Eye (referring to what is later known as the Eye of Horus or the Wadjet Eye, and depicts the light encircled by the serpent goddess Wadjet), he can speak on behalf of Ra. Ra disagrees. Strenuously. “Who the fuck gave you the authority to make decisions without me, assholes? I’m the head of this council, and I say it should go to Set! Horus is a good kid, sure, but he’s young and inexperienced.”
Set breaks in at this point. “You are very wise, oh Lord Ra. I would make a strong, powerful king, and I can prove it! Let Horus and I fight, one on one, and see who prevails. Let that god be king.” You can see that this is already shaping up into a dispute between whether kingship is decided by right of birth (Horus) or right of strength at arms (Set). This is an important legal dispute, so Ra suggests that the great living god Banebdjedet, the ram god, be summoned to act as an impartial judge. Banebdjedet was made from the ba, or spirit, of the first four gods (Osiris, Geb, Shu, and Ra) and is usually depicted with either four horns or four heads to reflect this. He’s the god of souls, and a combination of the gods that make life possible, so it’s a reasonable idea.
Banebdjedet answers the summons with his buddy/sidekick Ptah-Tatenen, a creator god of the underground fire (not unlike Hephaestus in the Greek pantheon). “Good, you’re here. Banebdjedet, would you please decide who should be king so that they can stop fighting over this every damned day?” Banebdejet absolutely does not want to decide this, so he suggests they instead seek the wisdom of Neith, the ancient goddess of war and weaving, as well as the creator of the world and the mother of Ra. It’s unclear why he doesn’t want to decide: perhaps he favored Horus but didn’t want to piss of a vengeful Set; maybe he respected Set’s power and his responsibility for protecting all of creation from the great serpent Apophis, who sought to kill Ra and devour the sun, and worried he would take his ball and go home if denied the crown. Set was by far the strongest of the gods who rode on Ra’s boat as he journeyed through the underworld of night to fight off the deadly serpent, and the world would likely end without him.
Thoth composes a letter on behalf of Ra, filling it with an absurd number of titles and epithets, and asks her who they should pick. Neith writes back that they should of course give the crown to Horus, son of Osiris, and like, now or she’ll be come so angry that the sky will touch the earth itself. To assuage Set’s anger, however, she suggests that he be given Ra’s daughters Anat and Astarte, aspects of the mother fertility goddess, which will allow Set to populate the world with his bestial offspring (since his wife is barren when his dick is the one involved).
You’re probably expecting Set to throw a massive hissy fit here, and you’re half right. A fit is definitely thrown in a hissy manner, but it’s Ra, not Set, who can’t handle the answer he asked for. The rest of the Ennead agreed that the matter was settled, but not Ra. “Horus, you are a despicable person and the crown is too heavy for the puny head of someone with the taste of his mother’s milk still in his mouth!” Bebon retorts “you’re out of touch, old man, so fuck off!” Ra is so incensed at this injustice that he lies down in his pavilion and mopes, throwing a god-sized temper-tantrum (because sky gods are assholes). Bebon is sent away to try an placate Ra, but no such luck.
Ra stays that way all day, refusing to speak to anyone, leaving the council unable to actually award the crown to Horus. After a day of this nonsense (which might have looked like a solar eclipse on earth), Hathor, Lady of the Southern Sycamore and a sky goddess, associated with Ra and Horus, decided she’d had enough of this bullshit. She knew that there was a tried and true way to brighten the mood of a dick-minded god like Ra: she went to his pavilion, made sure she was in his eye line, and showed Ra her pussy. This strikes Ra as a hilarious prank, and he laughs uproariously. His funk broken, he goes back to the Ennead to do business.
“Alright guys; I think we’ve been too hasty. Set, Horus: state your cases.” As expected, Set brags about how strong he is and how important he is as a warrior in protecting Ra from Apophis and Horus appeals to the tradition of the crown passing from father to son from Ra to Shu to Geb to Osiris and now to Horus. Isis can tell that Ra is still leaning towards his old buddy Set, and this pisses her right the hell off as she sees it as an insult both to her dead husband (who was killed by Set’s treachery) and her son (who is having his birthright stolen). The Ennead tries to calm her down, assuring her that the right decision will be reached.
Set hears this as a promise that the crown will go to her son (and he’s probably right, to be fair), which enrages him in turn. He threatens to murder a member of the Ennead every day unless they kick Isis out of the deliberations, then refuses to participate any further. Set is an unholy terror, so he can probably make good on his threat. Isis refuses to leave, so the Ennead leaves instead. They head to a nearby island to continue the discussion, leaving strict instructions with Nemty the ferryman not to bring Isis across, no matter what.
Isis takes this banishment about as well as you’d expect. She’s a powerful, important goddess in her own right, and she’s not about to take this lying down. She transformed herself into an old woman (a favorite trick of hers, as we’ve seen), affected a limp, and headed off to see Nemty with a golden signet ring on her finger. “Excuse me, young man; could you ferry me over to that island? I have a bowl of porridge for a young man there, who’s been tending cattle for five days now without food.” “I am sorry, old woman, but I have been given clear instructions not to ferry any women across to the island.” The other gods knew Isis’ trick and had prepared for it. Still, she wasn’t about to give up that easily. “Oh, that’s just to stop that bitch Isis from getting over. You can clearly see that I’m not her. I’m far too old and ugly.” Nemty considered her. She was old and ugly, so clearly, this couldn’t be Isis. He wasn’t going to risk his neck for free, though. “If I take you, what will you give me in payment?”
Isis pulled a small cake out of her robes. “How about this? It’s fresh, and very tasty.” “Fuck no. What good is a shitty cake? You think I’m going to disobey an order for some fucking cake?” Isis sighed in feigned resignation. “Alright, how about this gold signet ring? It is a family heirloom, but I can’t let that boy starve.” Gold talks, so he took the ring and ferried her across to the island.
On the island, Isis saw the Ennead eating bread under a pavilion with Ra. Set was the first to notice movement, and he peered in her direction. Isis was prepared for this, and her form wavered. A beautiful maiden, more gorgeous than any mortal woman, continued on her way towards the council. Set, being a horny bastard, immediately got a huge erection for this strange, exotic woman. No one else had noticed her yet, so Set wandered nonchalantly away from the gathering to go talk to her. “Hey there, sexy lady. Who might you be?” Set flexed nonchalantly, showing off his rippling physique (and hopefully distracting from his ugly, ugly face).
“No one important, great lord. My husband was a cattle rancher before he died. Our only son took over the cattle-guarding duty, which was fine until a stranger decided to squat in our barn. My son asked him why he was trespassing, and the stranger answered that he would beat my son’s ass and steal all of our cattle and then kick us out of our own home. I didn’t know who else to turn to, so I decided to come to you. Is there anything I could do to get you to help me? You’re so big and strong, I know you could take him.” Set smiled. “Of course, pretty lady. Let me at him. It’s only just that someone beat this asshole’s face bloody and toss him out on his ear for trying to steal your son’s proper place. We’ll make sure he takes over for his father, as is proper.”
Isis smiled and turned herself into a kite (again, the bird not the toy) and flew to the top of an acacia tree. “You have judged yourself, asshole. Do you have a snappy comeback now? Didn’t think so. Fuck off.” Set walked back to the council, stunned and ashamed at having been so easily tricked out of his rightful place. Ra saw the look on his face. “What’s up, Set?” “That bitch Isis snuck onto the island somehow and managed to trick me.” He told Ra the whole story. “That’s…that’s not good, dude. What do you have to say for yourself? Is there some argument you can still make?” “Yeah, man. Bring over that dickhead Nemty the ferryman. We should beat him bloody for breaking your command.” They summoned the poor bastard and had the fronts of his feet cut off. That soured the appeal of gold for him after that, and Nemty swore off gold forever, declaring that it would not be used in his city.
Ra, against his better judgment, agrees that the White Crown should go to Horus and says so in a letter to the Ennead. The letter was read aloud, pissing Set off again, even though he knew all about this and knew it was completely his fuck up. “Dude, why are you so upset? Ra made a decision. Suck it up.” Set responded by shrieking in the faces of the Ennead like a damned soul. “This is bullshit! We should throw the crown into the sea and have Horus and I both turn into hippos and dive under the water. Whoever comes up for air first loses. Three months minimum.” This was an absurdly biased test, especially since the matter had already been decided in Horus’ favor, but Ra really wanted Set to be king, so he completely ignored everything that had already happened and agreed to let the challenge decide the kingship, so they both transformed and submerged.
Isis knew her son had no chance at winning this contest. Set would murder her son under the water and take the throne. Her back stiffened. Not if she could help it. She took a skein of yarn and fashioned it into a rope, then made a harpoon out of copper. She tied her line off and hurled her spear into the water at Set. One hippo looks a lot like another, though, and she accidentally hit Horus instead. He bellowed in pain. “Mom, it’s me – Horus! Take your harpoon out of me!” She asked the harpoon to let her son go, and it did, so she threw it again at the other hippo. This one struck Set, who also screamed in pain. “Isis, I’m your brother! You’re killing me, sis! Take this harpoon out of me, please!”
Isis, who is apparently very compassionate and unable to watch someone in pain for a goddess who casually flings harpoons at family members, relents and asks the harpoon to let her brother go. That makes it Horus’ turn to fly into an unreasonable rage. With a face as fierce as a panther, he takes up his axe and chops off his mother’s head, stuffs it under his arm, and runs to the mountains. Isis, who is pretty resistant to normal death, turns into a headless statue carved from flint.
Ra notices this unexpected statue appear out of nowhere (although not the decapitation of Isis somehow) and asks what’s up with the weird statue. Thoth answered him. “Um, Lord Ra? That’s Isis, who was beheaded by Horus. For…reasons.” Now Ra got to be pissed off and called for the Ennead to seek out Horus and punish him for matricide. They followed Horus up into the mountains, seeking vengeance.
Set, bestial hunter that he is, finds Horus lying down under a tree first. He could have called for backup, but he’s not the divine bruiser for nothing, so he decides to handle this alone. He stalks up on the prone figure and seized him before Horus knew he was in danger, then body-slammed him to the rocky earth, pro wrestling style. The impact stunned him long enough for Set to straddle his chest and pluck out Horus’ eyes. Because gods are weird, Set takes the bloody eyeballs and buries them on the mountainside, where they become the bulbs of a lotus plant. Set then went back to the Ennead and reported that he hadn’t found shit, because he’s a lying sack of shit.
Then Hathor (she of the flashing pussy) set out alone and found Horus lying in the desert and weeping bloody tears. She took pity on him and decided to help him. She captured a wild gazelle and milked it, then washed his empty eye sockets with the fresh gazelle milk. This regrows his eyes instantly for reasons that aren’t explained, although it may have something to do with the fact that the gazelle is sometimes associated with Set. They went back to the Ennead, and Hathor announced that she had found Horus after he was attacked by Set, but she’d healed him up already.
The Ennead summoned Set and Horus and told them both to go get some food and sleep so that they could judge in peace, thank you very much, now please stop bothering each other all the time, okay? Set and Horus shook hands in a completely disingenuous show of friendship and Set, in a token of hospitality, offered to let Horus stay in his house for a few days. Horus, unable to decline without looking like he wasn’t willing to play ball, accepted the invitation. Buckle in, cause it’s about to get real weird and real upsetting. I want to stress that I am not embellishing this next bit at all.
That night, Set and Horus both lay down for bed. Once he was sure that Horus was asleep, Set crept out of his own bed and snuck into his opponent’s room. He pulled out his dick and jerked off a little until he was good and hard, then slid his erect penis gently between Horus’ thighs and raped him. Presumably, Set was trying to prove that Horus was less of a man because he’d been the bottom, but you would think that the whole raping thing would be worse, but that’s homophobia for you. Horus, naturally, woke up in the middle of this and was able to reach down and grab Set’s dick just as he came and gather up all of his semen in to his hands. Then, he jumped up and ran to his mother Isis, who apparently was all healed up from being fucking murdered and tranformed into a headless statue somehow that’s never explained. He showed her his hands, full of his uncle’s cum, and she shrieked in shock and horror (which is a little fair) and chopped off his hands (which is less so). They’ll grow back, though. Somehow. Don’t worry about it.
Isis then rubbed some sweet-smelling ointment on her son’s flacid dick, got him hard, and jerked him off into a pot. And it still gets weirder. In the morning, Isis took the jar of her son’s semen and went to find Set’s gardener. “Hey, gardener guy – is there anything you grow that Set is particularly fond of eating? Like, say, something he eats every day?” The gardener thought about it, then declared that lettuce was the only thing he had seen Set eat every day. Isis thanked him, went to the lettuce, and dressed it with her son’s cum. It was served to Set covered in Horus semen, who devoured it without noticing that weird taste like something out of the Waiting movie. Because gods are absurdly fertile, as I mentioned previously, Set somehow managed to get pregnant despite not having a uterus and taking the money shot to the mouth. Set, of course, didn’t realize he was pregnant yet, so the two went off to be judged by the tribunal.
They stood side by side before the Ennead. Set stepped forward to speak first. “Hey, guys, you’re gonna want to give the crown to me because, last night, I fucked my nephew in the ass against his will, which more or less proves that he’s weak like a woman because it’s like super gay to take a dick up the ass, even though I’m the one who kept an erection all the way through sex with my male nephew.” The Ennead erupted into jeers, screaming, spitting, and vomiting in Horus’ face for the crime of getting raped. Like I said, homophobia is a real bastard.
Horus just laughed and pulled the ace out of his sleeve. “Set’s a lying liar who lies. Yeah, he tried to rape me, but I’m smarter than he is, and I actually raped him way better. Tell you what, magically summon our most recent ejaculations and see where they answer from.” Thoth, who is way less thrown by all of this than I would be, made with the hocus pocus. Set’s semen was up first, and it answered from the nearby marsh where Isis had thrown Horus’ hands after cutting them off, along with the cum. Thoth then called on Horus’ cum to come forth, and it answered from inside Set “where should I come out from?” “Come out of his ear. That’s probably the least disturbing option available.” “I’m divine cum, man, there’s got to be a more dignified option than his ear.” “The top of his head, then.”
The god-jizz crawled its way up Set’s body and poked out of the top of his head, emerging as a golden solar disk. Thoth decided that it looked wicked cool and took the solar disk of Horus semen and made it into a crown that he proudly placed on his own head, which I guess means Set isn’t pregnant anymore. This whole exercise proved that Set was, in fact, wrong like some horribly twisted episode of CSI mixed with the world’s worst porn. The Ennead therefore declared in favor of Horus, who was a better incest rapist, I guess?
Once again, even though this should totally be the end of this, Set gets pissy at being denied and demands that they have another test, but for keeps this time. He’s a real sore loser. He challenges Horus to a stone boat building and racing competition, which is accepted as a completely valid way of deciding kingship because ancient Egyptian mythology is apparently an episode of Three’s Company. Just to be clear, they are going to build and sail ships carved from stone, because why make things easy when they can be way over-complicated?
Horus builds a ship of pine, then coats it in a thin layer of gypsum so that it looked like it was solid stone. Set, who wasn’t a very good cheater, built an actual stone boat out of the peak of a mountain per the rules. He couldn’t tell that Horus’ boat wasn’t really stone by looking at it, so they got ready to race. Set’s boat sank pretty much immediately because, like Mr. Peanutbutter from the Netflix show, he wasn’t actually very good at the thing he himself had set as the challenge for rulership. Set is, as mentioned, a sore loser, so he turns into a hippo and attacks Horus’ boat, breaking the rudder and rendering it without steering.
Horus is pissed at someone cheating differently than he did, draws a harpoon from somewhere and prepares to hurl it at the hippo-Set, but the Ennead demands he stay his hand. Reluctantly he does, but Horus is officially Over This Shit. He manages to sail his boat down the river to Sais to petition Neith to put an end to the 80 years of warfare and challenges. “Seriously, Set keeps proposing challenge after challenge, and I beat him every time, but somehow there’s always another challenge. If he ever manages to win one, he’ll declare victory but never accept defeat. It’s annoying.”
Horus then lists a bunch of holy courts that he and Set have argued before, each of which has decided in his favor over the years. She pushes the Ennead to stop being a bunch of assholes, and Thoth writes a letter on Ra’s behalf to one last judge, for realises this time. Appropriately enough, the last judge is Osiris, Horus’ father, who has taken up his new place as the Judge of Souls for the afterlife. The letter uses a bunch of flowery titles for Osiris, fitting for his kingship and showing great reverence for his wisdom. Osiris write back immediately saying that it’s only fair that his son not be cheated out of his birthright, especially since it was he, Osiris, who had created the barley and emmer (a kind of wheat) that sustained the gods, as well as the cattle, which no one else could have done. It’s a subtle reminder that without the sacrifice of Osiris, there would be no life or rebirth, and Ra takes exception to it because of course he does.
He writes back, telling Osiris that wheat and barley would exist even without his arrogant ass, effectively saying that he, Ra, is responsible for life and not Osiris. Osiris responds with further one-upsmanship. “It’s admittedly awesome that you invented the Ennead, although you allowed justice to die and go to the underworld. You should remember that I am now ruler of a land full of injustice and savage monsters who fear no god or goddess, and that at my command, they will go forth to steal the heart of anyone being naughty and drag them down here with me. Besides, no one is as powerful as me because no one else has made the ultimate sacrifice like me, dying so that others might live.”
Even Ra couldn’t argue with that logic (or its implied threat), and so Set once more demanded a challenge of strength against Horus and again they went to the island where again Horus whipped Set’s ass (probably through trickery and subtlety), which finally convinces Ra to have Isis put Set in handcuffs and taken prisoner for his crimes. He is brought before Ra. “Set, do you yet insist on trying to usurp Horus’ place in his father’s crown?” Set hung his head, at last defeated. “No, Lord Ra. Let Horus take the throne of his father Osiris.” And so, at long last, the war between Set and Horus ended as Horus took his rightful place as pharaoh.
This whole story is bizarre, start to finish. At its heart, it’s a tale about the legitimacy of the line of succession in the line of pharaohs. It established that the kings, who were the living avatars of the gods, retained their power and authority at death, but leave the realm of Horus for the realm of Osiris, making way for the next pharaoh to assume the royal identity and divine authority. It also subtly (and not so subtly) reinforces the idea that the pharaoh was the agent of civilization and order who stands strong against the forces of chaos, embodied in Set.
Some versions of the story end with Set destroyed completely, dead at Horus’ hands, but most have him clapped in chains to serve a specific job under Horus’ control. There is no sense in losing the talents of this crafty, tricksy bruiser for the gods, even if Horus is a bit of a trickster god himself. Horus is a figure of balance, incorporating the best aspects of his father Osiris’ order and his opponent Set’s chaos. None of that, however, explains why there needed to be so many semen-based hijinks, like the outakes of some mythological Revenge of the Nerds. Some things defy explanation.
With the proper king of the gods at last seated on the throne, it’s time for Gods and Monsters. This is a segment where I get into a little more detail about the personalities and history of one of the gods or monsters from this week’s pantheon that was not discussed in the main story. This week’s god is Babi, a monkey god known for his giant penis (because of course we had to stick with the dick theme of the episode).
Babi is a baboon god, and his name roughly translates to “bull of the baboons”, meaning that he’s the alpha or chief baboon. In the predynastic period of Egypt (and likely beyond), baboons were believed to be dead Egyptian ancestors, probably because they look and act like little, slightly weird people. The chief baboons were seen controlling large groups of the apes, and so they came to be identified with dead rulers. Naturally enough, Babi is therefore considered to be a god of the underworld, known as the Duat.
The hamadryas baboons, which were prevalent in ancient Egypt, are notably aggressive and omnivorous, which translated to Babi being a murderous, bloodthirsty god. As previously alluded to (see Episode 8), the Egyptians had a complicated post-death judgment ritual that every soul had to go through. After death (and once the soul had been coaxed out of the body and sent on its way), the soul would be guided by Anubis to the Hall of Truth (also known as the Hall of Two Truths) to await the judgment of Osiris. The stories differ on what happened there, but the most common version required the soul to make the Negative Confessions in front of Osiris, Thoth, Anubis, and the 42 judges.
The Negative Confessions were a list of 42 sins against self, others, and the gods that a soul could honestly claim to have never committed. These included the obvious (I have not stolen, I have not stolen the property of a god, and I have not gossiped) to the much more difficult to achieve (I have not lied, I have not caused anyone to weep, I have not made anyone angry), although it is thought that it was understood that it was meant as ‘I have not made anyone angry without good reason.’
Once the confessions were made, the judges would confer. If accepted, the soul would then present its heart to Osiris to weigh in golden scales against the white feather of truth. If it was lighter than the feather, the soul could move on. It not, the heart was eaten by Ammut (whom we discussed last time) and the soul’s entrails were eaten by Babi, resulting in the True Death, which meant that your last sight before dying in a way that ensured there was no afterlife for you was of a massive baboon covered in your blood and guts beside a lake of fire fucking the raw wound in your stomach with its massive, throbbing erection.
Seriously. Baboons are well-known for having high sex drives, so Babi was also a fertility god and went around with a truly massive erection literally all of the time. He was a walking viagra ad (although he didn’t need to worry about that warning about erections lasting more than four hours) to the extent that, being the first-born son of Osiris (presumably after his death without his living penis), his monstrous phallus was sometimes used as the mast of the ferry that conveyed the righteous to Aaru, a series of islands in the underworld. When not doing that, he apparently used his monkey dingdong as the deadbolt on the door of heaven, which he will throw open to receive a monarch who died.
Now, since men have always been far too concerned about using their penises, someone created a spell in the official funerary texts to align your dick with Babi’s deific one, thus ensuring that, after death, you could still fuck any sexy ghosts you might come across. You have to be careful, though, because Babi lives entirely on human entrails and has a habit of murdering any living being it finds on sight if not prevented. Osiris and the judges keep you safe in the Hall of Two Truths, but elsewhere, you better have the right spells prepared to keep him away from you. Him and his giant, angry dick.
That’s it for this episode of Myths Your Teacher Hated. Keep up with new episodes on our Facebook page, on iTunes, on Stitcher, on TuneIn, and on Spotify, or you can follow us on Twitter as @HardcoreMyth and on Instagram as Myths Your Teacher Hated Pod. You can also find news and episodes on our website at myths your teacher hated dot com. If you like what you’ve heard, I’d appreciate a review on iTunes. These reviews really help increase the show’s standing and let more people know it exists. If you have any questions, any gods or monsters you’d want to learn about, or any ideas for future stories that you’d like to hear, feel free to drop me a line. I’m trying to pull as much material from as many different cultures as possible, but there are all sorts of stories I’ve never heard, so suggestions are appreciated. The theme music is by Tiny Cheese Puff, whom you can find on fiverr.com.
Next time, we’ll visit Korea for the first time for a story of fishies and bunnies. You’ll discover that fish hooks can cause a lot of problems, that rabbits can apparently breathe underwater, and that you should never trust a doctor who makes house calls. Then, in Gods and Monsters, we’ll meet the one-legged goblin who just wants to rassle. That’s all for now. Thanks for listening.